Ken Dixon: It's still home, but way changed

Updated 12:01 pm, Thursday, October 17, 2013

It wasn't exactly the return of the Prodigal Son the other day, driving around the old hometown, not quite hopelessly lost.

Trying to get a grip on Stamford's place in Connecticut's firmament entailed a trip to a place that exists in memory but has been eclipsed by 21st Century facts.

Fortunately, I didn't drive into Stamford Harbor, although like local voters looking at the three-week sprint to Election Day, I hit some dead ends.

There, in the South End, which developers and pols want to call Harbor Point, sit luxury apartments in what's left of a poorer minority neighborhood. This is where Bridgewater Associates has planned to relocate their Westport headquarters in a new $750 million, 850,000-square-foot complex with $115 million in state aid for one of the most profitable hedge funds in the world.

In town to participate in a forum to quiz the four pretenders to the mayoral throne, I was bombarded with upscale corporate logos on nearly every block.

Thanks goodness for Rubino's scrap-metal yard and even the O&G plant, for that matter, because industrial Stamford barely exists. The old Yale and Towne factory complex, the vestige of the semi-accidental founding of the once-iconic lock factory in 1868, is now yuppie housing. But at least the buildings remain.

Pitney Bowes, the former postage-metering monopoly that was the biggest city employer back in the `60s and `70s, before the influx of corporate ant farms along Interstate 95, will move out by early next year, becoming history like the residents of neighboring Woodland Cemetery, but unlike the graveyard denizens, moving on.

Change is fine. Evolution must occur and Stamford is the region's economic epicenter.

Danbury, up there on the northern frontier of Fairfield County, seems a little removed from the Northeast Corridor to become an economic rival, or equal, of Stamford.

Bridgeport, on the eastern end of the county, while the state's largest city, remains a one-party Democratic town, which contributes to its developmental lethargy and incestuous politics.

Once Bridgeport gets off its permanent schneid, maybe the daily conga line of commuter cars won't stretch bumper-to-bumper every morning to and from Stamford along the parkway and I-95, from Route 8, Route 25 and secondary roads. You know those Bridgewater titans will have to move to Stamford, because they won't have the patience for the motorized lemmings march.

You can say one thing about Stamford politics: while Democrats have a registration edge, voters like to rotate their parties when there's an open seat.

Driving slowly around the south side of the city was an eye-opener, from The Cove, to the ritzy Shippan peninsula, along the vestigially industrial Canal Street, across the South End, over the West Branch of the Mill River and around Waterside, looping back along Fairfield Avenue to Richmond Hill and finally downtown and the University of Connecticut branch.

I parked across Washington Boulevard, in what gray-haired locals remember as the Bloomingdale's parking lot. Sneaking a peak at the river, I was surprised by the near-prehistoric stylings of a great blue heron, which floated down like a pterodactyl, scouted for frogs for a few minutes, then lifted off in circles clear of the trees and over Broad Street, before heading back upstream.

Inside the UConn auditorium were the four mayoral candidates. Well, three candidates and John Zito, a heating contractor who needs a donkey and a few more double negatives in his speech to fulfill his quixotic destiny. In a tacit admission that his candidacy is unhinged, Zito said that if he were elected mayor, he'd remove the door from the mayor's office.

Still, an Italian surname -- current Mayor Mike Pavia is not running for re-election -- could pull a few votes away from Michael Fedele, the IT executive and Republican former lieutenant governor.

Neither Martin nor Murphy seemed ready to take the rap for the recent property revaluation that saddled some homeowners with double-digit tax hikes.

"The city, quite frankly, is broke and needs to get its financial house in order," Murphy said. "There's a lot of waste in our budget. We can't just raise taxes. People will leave town and we'll lose our tax base."

"Small businesses are the economic engines that create jobs," Fedele offered, blasting the revaluation process. "We should have looked at this a long time ago. The money is better in your pockets than ours."

Martin warned that growth might be outstripping the market, with a 29 percent vacancy rate. In defense, he said the city's budget has increased below the rate of inflation. Stamford is "extremely expensive" and housing prices are at the mercy of the market, he said, warning that officials have to "rethink" economic development.

Across the street, on the side of the huge, 34-story Trump Parc Stamford, is about the biggest banner you could imagine, offering "homes" starting at $469,000 for a one-bedroom. Not exactly my kind of town.